What Is a DL Tag/Element? - XHTML 1.0 Tutorials - Understanding Lists and List Items

A "dl" element is block level element that can be used to define a definition list, where items are displayed with leading terms. Here are basic rules about "dl" elements:

• "dl" elements are block level elements.
• "dl" elements can not have text contents.
• An "dl" element must have one or more pairs of "dt" and "dd" elements as sub-elements.
• Each pair of "dt" and "dd" elements will be displayed by browsers as a term and a definition.

Below is a good tutorial example of "dl" elements:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
 <head>
  <title>Definition Lists</title>
 </head>
 <body>
  <p>Acronyms:</p>
  <dl>
  <dt>CSS</dt><dd>Cascading Style Sheet</dd>
  <dt>DTD</dt><dd>Document Type Definition</dd>
  <dt>WWW</dt><dd>World Wide Web</dd>
  <dt>XML</dt><dd>eXtensible Markup Language</dd>
  </dl>
 </body>
</html>

If you save the above document as definition_list.html, and view it with Internet Explorer, you will see a list of items with leading terms as shown below: